Article index:

• Page 1: Preparation
• Page 2: Overclocking the GTX 560 Ti
• Page 3: Conclusion

2 – GTX 560 Ti Overclocking

Okay it’s time to OC our ASUS GTX 560 Ti DirectCU II TOP. Let’s see how the GF114 GPU is overclockable and how the DirectCU II cooler is efficient.

In the next lines, TPC stands for total power consumption of the testbed.

Testbed:
– CPU: Core i7 960 @ 3.2GHz
– RAM: 4GB DDR3 Corsair Dominator
– Motherboard: GIGABYTE X58-A UD5
– Windows 7 64-bit
– Graphics drivers: R266.44
– PSU: Corsair AX1200

For each settings I ran FurMark at least 5 minutes. If settings are a bit too high, the application crashes (***ERROR***) but not Windows. And if the settings are too high, the whole system freezes (***FREEZE***)…

Let’s go:

• GPU core: 900MHz, Vcore: 1.025V, TPC: 351W, max GPU temp: 78°C – burn-in test: OK
• GPU core: 940MHz, Vcore: 1.025V, TPC: 360W, max GPU temp: 80°C – burn-in test: OK
• GPU core: 950MHz, Vcore: 1.025V, TPC: 362W, max GPU temp: 80°C – burn-in test: ***ERROR***

As you can see, with the last OC setting, the GTX 560 Ti does not pass the FurMark test. Let’s rise the Vcore:

• GPU: 950MHz, Vcore: 1.050V, mem: 4200MHz, TPC: 371W, max GPU temp: 80°C – burn-in test: OK
• GPU: 960MHz, Vcore: 1.050V, mem: 4200MHz – burn-in test: ***ERROR***
• GPU: 960MHz, Vcore: 1.062V, mem: 4200MHz, TCP: 382W, max GPU temp: 83°C – burn-in test: OK
• GPU: 971MHz, Vcore: 1.075V, mem: 4200MHz – burn-in test: ***ERROR***
• GPU: 969MHz, Vcore: 1.062V, mem: 4200MHz, burn-in test: ***ERROR***
• GPU: 969MHz, Vcore: 1.087V, mem: 4200MHz, TPC: 399W, max GPU temp: 86°C – burn-in test: OK
• GPU: 980MHz, Vcore: 1.087V, mem: 4200MHz – burn-in test: ***ERROR***
• GPU: 970MHz, Vcore: 1.112V, mem: 4200MHz, TPC: 413W, max GPU temp: 89°C – burn-in test: OK
• GPU: 980MHz, Vcore: 1.112V, mem: 4200MHz- burn-in test: ***ERROR***
• GPU: 990MHz, Vcore: 1.125V, mem: 4200MHz – burn-in test: ***ERROR***
• GPU: 990MHz, Vcore: 1.137V, mem: 4200MHz – burn-in test: ***ERROR***
• GPU: 984MHz, Vcore: 1.125V, mem: 4200MHz – burn-in test: ***ERROR***
• GPU: 980MHz, Vcore: 1.150V, mem: 4200MHz, burn-in test: ***FREEZE***

The final stable OC setting that passes FurMark 1.9.0 burn-in test is:
GPU: 970MHz and Vcore: 1.112V

For this OC setting, the power consumption of the card alone is:
(413W-100W)*0.9 = 281W

where 100W is the power consumption of the testbed at idle and 0.9 the efficiency factor of the PSU (see this article, there is a graph of the AX1200 efficiency).

Do you remember the TDP of a reference GTX 560 Ti: 170W…

The DirectCU II cooler seems to be very efficient because under this high OC setting, the GPU temperature is reasonable: 89°C.

Maybe, looking at these values, you’re thinking there is a bug somewhere because on NVIDIA GTX 500 series, there is a power monitoring hardware that limits the power draw. On its GTX 560 Ti DC2 TOP, ASUS has not implemented the power limiter. That explains why we reach such a power consumption… And why the GTX 560 Ti DC2 TOP is nice for overclockers 😉

I validated this OC setting with 3DMark11 and Unigine Heaven.

Unigine Heaven 2.1 (D3D11, 1920×1080, 4X MSAA, tessellation: normal) scores:

39.3 FPS, Scores: 989 – ASUS GTX 560 Ti DCII TOP (core: 970MHz)

38.3 FPS, Scores: 966 – ASUS HD 6950 (core: 810MHz)

37.8 FPS, Scores: 951 – ASUS GTX 560 Ti DCII TOP (core: 900MHz)

3DMark11 Performance preset scores

P4782 – ASUS GTX 560 Ti DCII TOP (core: 970MHz)

P4627 – ASUS HD 6950 (core: 810MHz)

P4521 – ASUS GTX 560 Ti DCII TOP (core: 900MHz)

More scores can be found here: ASUS GeForce GTX 560 Ti DirectCU II TOP Direct3D performances.

FurMark is very hard with GPUs. But let’s see if we can find higher OC settings for the other applications that put different stress test on the GPU like 3DMark11 or games.

For 3DMark11, the max OC setting passed the test: {GPU: 1000MHz ; Vcore: 1.112V}

P4842 – ASUS GTX 560 Ti DCII TOP (core: 1000MHz)

P4627 – ASUS HD 6950 (core: 810MHz)

For Crysis (I used Crysis GPU benchmark, 1920×1080), same OC settings: {GPU: 1000MHz ; Vcore: 1.112V}

71.62 FPS – ASUS GTX 560 Ti DCII TOP (core: 1000MHz)

67.95 FPS – ASUS GTX 560 Ti DCII TOP (core: 900MHz)

More scores can be found here: ASUS GeForce GTX 560 Ti DirectCU II TOP Gaming performances.

With Unigine Heaven 2.1 the max stable OC setting I found is: {GPU: 990MHz ; Vcore: 1.150V}

39.9 FPS, Scores: 1005 – ASUS GTX 560 Ti DCII TOP (core: 990MHz)

39.4 FPS, Scores: 991 – EVGA GTX 480 (ref clocks)

38.3 FPS, Scores: 966 – ASUS HD 6950 (GPU: 810MHz)

Article index:

• Page 1: Preparation
• Page 2: Overclocking the GTX 560 Ti
• Page 3: Conclusion